Born around 1800, María Gertrudis Barceló Her childhood years are still debated among scholars of history, but her subsequent marriage to Don Manuel Antonio Sisneros on June 23, 1823, is recorded in the records of Tomé, a small town about 30 miles south of Albuquerque. Although she married Sisneros, a member of a prominent family, she kept her maiden name. She preferred the attribution of Mrs. Barceló. As she gained popularity as a player, the locals began calling her “La Tules”, a nickname that translates to “the cane”, in reference to her diminutive slim figure.
After moving to Santa Fe, she lost two sons in infancy and adopted a daughter in 1826. During this time, La Tules decided to turn her gift for dealing letters and reading men into a career as a courtesan, Monte merchant, mistress, and an expert mule trader. She knew exactly how to capitalize on the insatiable gambling habits of the merchants traveling from Missouri on the newly opened Santa Fe Trail. Working in a public gambling hall, she used her charm and beauty to separate the merchants from their money. Up to 100 Monte tables operated in Santa Fe during this time, with stakes up to $50,000. In 1838, city officials realized that more money was made from issuing gambling licenses than from collecting fines, and penalized the previously illegal activity.
Within a few years, he had enough capital to buy a “Hello,or gambling house and canteen, in which he entertained his guests with dances, drinks, luxurious dinners and games of chance. Over time, she amassed a fortune as Santa Fe’s most renowned Montes dealer and confidante to some of New Mexico’s most powerful politicians and military. and religious leaders. This menagerie included Manuel Armijo, the governor of New Mexico, with whom she had an illicit relationship that eventually led to his downfall.
Tea living room de La Tules was located on Calle San Francisco at the southeast corner of Palace Avenue and Burro Alley where it stretched the width of the entire block. It was a long, low adobe building that eventually featured finely carved furniture from Spain resting on exquisite Turkish rugs. The main bar meandered around a gigantic room. Two additional mahogany bars connected to form a quadrangle. Large gleaming mirrors adorned the walls behind bars, but omitted from the gambling casino itself. Elaborate crystal sconces with candle rings provided plenty of light. As a final touch, private gambling halls stretched along present-day Burro Alley from San Francisco Street to Palace Avenue along the Plaza. Private card rooms were strictly for professional players, important visitors, and wealthy individuals. La Tules integrated the operation with a small army of bartenders, waiters, dealers, and female “hostesses.”
There is considerable debate as to its beauty. Some accounts depict her as a stunning beauty with olive skin, radiant dark hair that fell to a slender neck, and sultry black eyes that sparkled in the glow of chandeliers. They described her as charming, beautiful, fashionable, cunning, witty, and brilliant. One writer described her as: “…like a moving sylph with a slender figure, fine-featured, smooth, dark face of Spanish descent, fine-lined arched eyebrows, flowing dark hair, thin lips, a beautiful woman, with strong, proud head and the demeanor of a wild cat”. On the other hand, others described her in less glowing terms, describing her clothing as “low-cut shirts and short petticoats, similar to Eve’s.” careless style. Another wrote: “When I saw her, she was richly dressed, but tastelessly, her fingers literally covered with rings, while her neck was adorned with three heavy gold chains, the longest of which was attached to a huge crucifix. of the same precious metal.”
If you looked at the drawing of La Tules that appeared in the April 1854 magazine Harper’s New Monthly Magazine could side with his detractors. She comes across as a dour, cigarette-smoking hag who surely couldn’t justify a description of a tantalizing beauty. Thinking about it, it could be postulated that the image of the magazine was La Tules in her last years, where the wear and tear of the long hours of dealing with the forest had taken its toll on her appearance. In all likelihood, she was originally a very striking young lady capable of being a magnificent seductress.
There is definitely no debate that La Tules was unmatched in dealing with Monte in his living room. Matt Field met her in 1839 and was amazed by her genius at handling cards. He wrote: “A woman was dealing, and if you had looked in her countenance for any symptom which would enable you to discover how the game was, you would have walked away unsatisfied; for only a quiet seriousness could be discerned, and the cards fell from her fingers as steadily as if only handled a knitting needle”. In his book Doña Tules, courtesan and gambler from Santa Fe, Mary J. Straw Cook wrote about La Tulles. She wrote that, “She dealt night after night, often until dawn, with ‘deft precision’ as the cards ‘slid from her long fingers as steadily as if she were wielding only a knitting needle… With feminine bravado, skill and ringed fingers swept heaps of gold, the result of perpetual practice, while winning again and again.”
Matt Field, while in Santa Fe one night, watched as La Tules turned over Monte to a Kentuckian whose stated goal was to ruin her bank. He later wrote that the drunk was:
“…swearing he would make or break him before he rose from his seat…and drinking to the health of the Spanish lady from the refilled glass that was then handed to him…As daylight dawned cracks through the door, (La Tules) once again swept the table, and the reckless merchant was left without a dollar.
The Lady then curtsied and disappeared through a side door with the dignity of an Empress and the same skillfully modeled smile, followed by her attendant carrying heavy bags of gold and Mexican dollars.”
One of the legendary tales associated with the gambling queen revolved around those bags of gold and Mexican currency. Because there were no banks in Santa Fe or Taos, La Tules periodically sent some of their large profits to banks in the United States. As the story goes, he sent a team of 10 mules loaded with 20 buckskin bags filled with gold to the US with a contingent of armed guards. Somewhere in the desert, bandits attacked the mule train. Before being killed, the guards buried the cache of gold and did not divulge the location. Nobody found the gold and the legend about the “Lost Treasure of La Tules” began.
The Tules were quite influential politically and, through their relationship with Armijo, the last Mexican governor of New Mexico, obtained information about the practices of the politicians. They lived lavishly on bribes and heavy taxes from poor Mexicans and American merchants. As the conditions for war with the United States loomed, he admitted that the US occupation meant the survival of his people. As Mexico’s power waned and the United States acquired New Mexico in 1846, Doña Tules secured her position with a loan to General Kearny of the United States in order to pay for her troops, on the condition that she have a military escort to the Victory Dance at La Fundación. It was a lavish event attended by the high spheres of the Santa Fe Society.
He was also credited with alerting American authorities to the Mexican-Indian conspiracy of December 1846. La Tules had many opportunities to hear Mexican conspiracies and deceptions in their gambling halls. As a result, it is recognized that he possibly prevented a bloodbath in Santa Fe.
Doña Tules remained a colorful and controversial figure in Santa Fe history until her elaborately planned and executed funeral, presided over by the newly appointed Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy. Catholic Church records say she was buried in Santa Fe on January 17, 1852. Various reports by her biographers have described her funeral as lavish: some say $1,600 for spiritual services, others $1,000 paid just for the candles. La Tules’s lifelong donations to her charity had granted him access to the highest social circles in Santa Fe and writing her will; she stipulated a final gift to the church to make amends for her questionable past. She was one of the last people buried within the adobe walls of La Parroquia, the former parish church on the Plaza that was later replaced by the Cathedral of San Francisco. What happened to her remains during construction and possibly where her treasure was buried in the desert is only part of the mystery that continues to intrigue historical researchers about this fascinating “El Monte Reina de Santa Fe”.
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Historical Note: The popular gambling game of Monte (1800) is often confused with the sleight of hand scam called “Three Card Monte”. There is absolutely no connection between the two; one is a game of luck, while the second is a “sure” winner for the dealer.